Is Nintendo's potentially industry-changing new monster battling patent enforceable? We asked some lawyers

Nintendo has been granted a new patent in the US, following its ongoing patent infringement lawsuit with Palworld developer Pocketpair.

The new patent, granted last week by the US Patent and Trademark Office, covers the gameplay mechanic of summoning a sub-character to let it fight another. The patent application was filed in March 2023 and has been granted without objection (thanks Games Fray).

Such a patent would not only implicate Palworld with its monster summoning and battling, but many similar games from long-standing rival Digimon, to the forthcoming Honkai: Nexus Anima and DokeV, as well as indies like Temtem and Cassette Beasts.

There are a number of steps in the patent pertaining to the gameplay mechanic, as follows:

1. A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium having stored therein a game program, the game program causing a processor of an information processing apparatus to execute:
2. performing control of moving a player character on a field in a virtual space, based on a movement operation input;
3. performing control of causing a sub character to appear on the field, based on a first operation input, and
4. when an enemy character is placed at a location where the sub character is caused to appear, controlling a battle between the sub character and the enemy character by a first mode in which the battle proceeds based on an operation input, and
5. when the enemy character is not placed at the location where the sub character is caused to appear, starting automatic control of automatically moving the sub character that has appeared; and
6. performing control of moving the sub character in a predetermined direction on the field, based on a second operation input, and, when the enemy character is placed at a location of a designation, controlling a battle between the sub character and the enemy character by a second mode in which the battle automatically proceeds.

All of these steps must be followed for Nintendo to have a case, but in theory it could launch an infringement lawsuit against a number of games with this patent now in place.

But is this patent enforceable through further lawsuits from Nintendo?

Don McGowan, former chief legal officer at The Pokémon Company, believes the patent will likely be ignored. “I wish Nintendo and Pokémon good luck when the first other developer just entirely ignores this patent and, if those companies sue that developer, the developer shows decades of prior art,” he told Eurogamer, adding: “This isn’t Bandai Namco with the loading screen patent”.